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How does one person change a whole mass of people? This amazing video shows one man going from nutcase to leader of a large crowd in about three minutes.

As the commentary says, note the role of the first follower. This person changes a nutcase who is acting alone into a leader. The leader must adopt the first follower as an equal and not exert superiority. The first follower is also a kind of leader.

Interestingly it doesn’t seem to matter that the first follower is possibly mocking the lone nutcase, to me it’s not clear if this is happening actually, but that’s probably mostly thanks to the reaction of the leader. The leader adopts and includes the follower and the follower turns to call his friends.

At some point there is an inflection point where the non-conformance of the breakaway group becomes conformance to a new dominant behaviour. People not following start looking more conspicuous than the followers.

Please excuse the poor video quality, I think the raw capture of a real, unscripted social effect is worth putting up with a wobbly camera.